Entrepreneur America: Lessons from Inside Rob Ryan's High-Tech Start-Up Boot Camp [Hardcover]

Rob Ryan (Author), Phaedra Hise (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2001

Maybe you've always wanted to start your own business. Or perhaps you're already a member of a small start-up dot.com and you have no idea what you're doing.

You're not alone.

Entrepreneurship is the hottest growth area in America today -- there are 30 million entrepreneurs now, and 60 million more say they would like to be. Do you have what it takes -- do you know what it takes -- to compete and succeed with a small business?

Rob Ryan will help you find out. Ryan founded Ascend Communications in 1989, which in nine years grew from zero to over $2 billion in sales. He now runs the Entrepreneur America "boot camp" from his ranch in Montana, where startup wanna-bes come to develop their entrepreneurial skills. Two of Rob's boot camp companies, Silicon Spice and LookSmart, have market capitalizations of over $1 billion.

If you can't get to Montana, however, come here. In Entrepreneur America: Lessons from Inside Rob Ryan's High-Tech Start-up Boot Camp, Ryan shares his techniques for developing a successful team, product, pitch, and, eventually, business.

Ryan focuses on methods he's developed over the years for building a sustainable business that makes money. He emphasizes the importance of testing your idea on customers, building the product, and making sure that product offers something new and important to those customers.

Through anecdotes and advice, Ryan shows you how to:

Be a red polka-dotted zebra. Make sure your customers can pick you out of a crowd.

Find out if the dogs will eat the dog food. Are you giving your customers exactly what they want?

Learn the 10x rule. Your product must be either 1/10 the cost of your competitors', or ten times the performer.

Stay ahead of the pack. Construct a business model so advanced it'll take a year or more for your competitors to catch up.

Business ideas are like belly buttons, says Ryan -- everybody has one. Entrepreneur America will show you how to turn your idea into a real product, take it to investors, and get your startup started.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With $2.5 million in venture capital, Rob Ryan founded a tech company that sold for $22 billion 10 years later. He now operates a "boot camp" in rural Montana for wannabes from promising start-ups interested in following in his footsteps. In Entrepreneur America, he shares personal experiences along with lessons learned from his mentoring program of the same name. Chapters titled with Silicon Valley slang (like "Do the Dogs Like the Dog Food?" and "Sucking the Air out of the Room") help readers assess their readiness to meet with venture capitalists, determine whether consumers really need what they're offering, examine core competencies and market position, measure how the product or service matches the intended audience, and compile a winning business plan. Two additional chapters focus on "how to become number one and stay number one" by managing and hiring effectively, dealing with directors, and handling other responsibilities that become critical once an idea gets off the ground. Ryan shows how some of the 50-plus concepts that passed through his program proceeded afterwards, and includes exercises and other tools for those hoping to replicate their victories and avoid their mistakes. The result should prove practical and inspiring for anyone shaping a new business in today's increasingly demanding environment. --Howard Rothman

From Publishers Weekly

Ryan, founder of Ascend Communication (which he sold to Lucent for $25 billion), now spends his time offering guidance to entrepreneurs, particularly recent college graduates intent on launching businesses. Ryan won't invite just anyone to his Montana ranch for strategy sessions: his selection criteria include a solid business plan, a working prototype and clear ideas for the direction of the business. Ryan's upbeat approach and practical advice will be welcome in today's Internet-crazed economy. With extensive online and broadcast publicity, this book should easily find its audience.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harperbusiness; 1st edition (January 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006662066X
• ISBN-13: 978-0066620664
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,519,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do You Have It Takes?, April 21, 2001

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Entrepreneur America: Lessons from Inside Rob Ryan's High-Tech Start-Up Boot Camp (Hardcover)

Several years ago, an article in Inc. magazine generated so much interest that it led to the publication of a book, Semper Fi, in which Dan Carrison and Rod Walsh advocate a "business boot camp" based on a model provided by the U.S. Marine Corps. In his own book, Ryan provides a number of invaluable "lessons" which can be learned by those who attend his High-Tech Start-up Book Camp in Montana. (Actually, these same "lessons" can be of great value to anyone else who is also involved with launching or developing a start-up company.) Ryan organizes his material within seven chapters, following an approach "built on my years of negotiating the peaks and valleys of running (and financing) a successful company. [He founded Ascend Communications in 1989. Under his leadership, its revenue climbed from $16-million to $1.3-billion in five years and was eventually purchased by Lucent Technologies for $22-billion in 1999.] It's a carefully staged process that beings with building the proper team and ends with managing your board of investors." In Chapter 1, Ryan discusses several types of Entrepreneurial Wannabes. In subsequent chapters he guides his reader through the "carefully staged process" and concludes with an Epilogue in which he explains why only a few start-up companies make it and why most others don't.

With all due respect to Ryan's insightful comments and recommendations, one of this book's greatest benefits is derived from the series of questions which he poses. For example, after a 3,000-mile journey from Boston to meet with Ryan at his Roaring Lion, one entrepreneur set up to present a slide presentation. Before it began, Ryan asked "Why would anyone want your product? What is the application? What is the value proposition to the customer? Who is the customer? Is anyone else doing this stuff, and are they successful?" You get the idea. Ryan seems to have too much respect for others' time and energy (as well as for his own) to beat around the proverbial bush. Throughout the book, he gets right to the point. Actually, to a number of separate but interrelated key points.

This book reminds me of O'Toole's The Executive's Compass in the sense that reading that book is no substitute for partcipating in an Executive Seminar sponsored by the Aspen Institute. Similarly, reading Ryan's book is no substitute for participating in his boot camp in Montana. (I hasten to add, neither he nor O'Toole makes such a claim.) My own rather extensive prior experience with start-ups and already-ups suggests that it is extremely difficult to get honest (preferably frank) feedback from family members and friends. (Perhaps they do not want to hurt feelings. Perhaps they feel unqualified to express an opinion. Whatever.) As a result, the most important questions are often not asked...and therefore not answered. Ryan asks all manner of such "tough" questions, as previously indicated, and then (when he deems it appropriate) suggests some possible answers. If the unexamined life is not work living, the unexamined business idea is not worth developing.

Although Ryan may not have had this objective in mind when writing this book with Phaedra Hise, it can also be of substantial value as a "reality check" for decision-makers in well-established businesses. Their answers to the cluster of questions may once have been correct when formulated but that is not necessarily true now.

Whoever you are, whatever the size and nature of your organization, regardless of its location amidst what Adizes calls "corporate lifecycles", this book offers an "intellectual boot camp" in which I urge you to engage your mind ASAP.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I want to attend!!, February 20, 2001

By 

John Grounds "sirjohnathon" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Entrepreneur America: Lessons from Inside Rob Ryan's High-Tech Start-Up Boot Camp (Hardcover)

I must admit that I hadn't heard of this book or Rob when I started looking for advice on VC funding. However, as soon as I read the first few pages I knew I had a winner.

This book is an absolute must read for anyone that is starting up a business. The information is vital to helping you nail down your value proposition, figuring out what is the core of your business, and how to continue the growth. I originally thought it was a book on how to get funded, but I found it was much more.

Being a marketer myself, I noticed the suttle "soft-sell" of the entreprenuer America program...however, it was so convincing I want to attend!! Our company is in the beginning stages of putting together a capital campaign, and I would love to have Rob show us the way.

With an MBA from a top 5 school, countless certificates from "how-to" seminars, and a huge library, I thought I was a solid "entreprenuer"...but this book quickly proved I still have a lot of growing to do....time for me to get more "guts and brains", and less "dreams".

Highly recommended!!!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boot Camp and Launch Pad, ALL-in-one !!, September 6, 2001

By 

J. Booth (West Lafayette, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Entrepreneur America: Lessons from Inside Rob Ryan's High-Tech Start-Up Boot Camp (Hardcover)

Rob Ryan is not just some 'guy' spouting off about 'how to succeed in getting funding for your buisness'. Rob has REALLY been 'there' ... and still is THERE!

He's a MAJOR success: well worth emmulating. He's a living example of what he tells you in this book. It's real-world. It's applicable. BUT ..it's NOT for everyone - especially those who "can't handle the truth"!

If you are serious about developing entrepreneurial ventures, whether in technology or another area, then you will need to know HOW to raise the capital. In this case, this book is 'just what the doctor ordered'.

You will not only enjoy the book, but Rob has built a great web site to compliment and augment it. The site is repleat with threaded discussions; tutorials and more. This IS a serious "HOW TO SUCCEED" book.

Get it today and begin your grandest venture yet... SUCCEED!